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Friday, January 6, 2012

Judging High Court Judges

If it hadn’t been for the fact that two factions
of the Pretoria Bar Council could not agree on
what honesty is – something that is
elementary even in kindergarten – 13 crooked advocates who ripped off the South Africa Government’s Road Accident Fund might well have got away with token punishments while
being allowed to keep their wages of sin totalling millions.

When the ball was thrown into the
court of JudgesKees Van Dijkhorst, PietCombrinck and William deVilliers they
listed their qualifications for the job asour
long experience as advocates andon the Bench.Modesty prevented themfrom
mentioning that two of them (Van Dijkhost and De Villiers) were
previous Chairmenof thePretoria Bar.

Excuse me Your Honours, but
shouldn’t that part about having been advocates be a disqualification rather
than a reference? If you were picking a jury wouldn’t you object if three of
them had this kind of relationship to the accused?

You were in effect being asked to judge familyand there is somethingterribly wrong with a system that puts
you in that position.

And I’m sorry Your
Honours but I think you blew you own argument in your judgment when you
decided to allow seven of them to go on practicing when all 13 had agreed that
they had been dishonest.

From legal history you quoted what
was expected of an advocate as defined by South Africa’s Supreme
Court of Appeal and you can’t go much higher than that. The preservation of ahigh standardofprofessional ethicshaving thus been left almostentirely in
the hands of individual practitioners, it stands to reason, firstly that
absolute personal integrity and scrupulous honesty are demanded of each of them
and, secondly, that a practitioner who lacks these qualities cannot be
expected to play his part.

Did you miss that bit about absolute personal integrity andscrupulous
honesty?
According to my humble interpretation this leaves no room for dishonest
advocates who should all be kicked out of the profession.

Yet you stated that this
involvedweighing up the conduct complained of
against the conduct expected of an advocated and this was a value judgment.

Well it’s beyond me how yourvalue judgmentcomplied with what
the Supreme Court of Appeal had to say on the
matter.

You effectively turned the English language
upside down by telling us there are degrees of dishonesty that can
still comply with absolutepersonal
integrity and scrupulous honesty.

You muddied the waters still further by quoting
from decided cases. Your first example was that even when an advocated had been
found to be dishonest he could escape being struck off if there were exceptional
circumstances.But you also said that these decided cases were not
binding on a court’s discretion so what was the point of mentioning them.

If one goes on your judgment Your Honours it seems that just being an advocate,
especially a Senior Counsel qualifies as an exceptional circumstance. As a layman I
would have thought that instead of putting the two Senior
Counsel, who were in this rogues’ gallery, into the group that should be
allowed to go on with their job, you should have given them an even heavier
penalty than the ordinary advocates.

And that’s ignoring the fact that
all of them should have been sent packing.

Some of your other references to decided cases
indicate how the law pussy foots around when it comes to dealing with its own.

It is apparently considered
unbecoming and disgraceful for those who
profess to have knowledge of the law to be ignorant of the laws of the land.

Noreally.Do you need a court to spell that out? No wonder some advocates have such a problem defining
honesty.

And the systematic breaking of the rules to which
anadvocate
subscribes may indicate a lack of responsibility and integrity which is
characteristic of an advocate. What only MAY?And if this case of the 13
is a yardstick Your Honours it is far fetched to
describe integrityas being characteristic of an advocate.

It now looks as though the Supreme Court of Appeal is going to be asked to do the
job all over again because the General Council of the
Bar, the umbrella body for the Pretoria Bar
and the other Bars in the country, is taking the
matter to this court to have the remaining Magnificent
Seven struck from the roll.

Honestly the law’s an ass or is
the legal term arse?

Yours faithfully,

Jon, a Barman of repute.

P.S. Pictured is Senior Counsel Brenton Geach hiding his
identity outside court as poorly as he hid his thieving ways.

Buy my book 'Where have all the children gone?' on Amazon Kindle It's a thriller with an underlying love story that defied generations of prejudice.

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About Me

I was born in South Africa just before the Boer War whenever that was?
Started life with a golden spoon in my mouth which made eating rather difficult as a result I was under nourished as a child.
Went to a posh school where I only got moved up a class when my old man donated another sight screen for the cricket pitch.
Career prospects were dismal and I was once turned down for a job in the London sewers. "Too highly qualified;"that’s what they said.
I became a journalist when the Police Force wouldn’t have me.
Like most journos I know nothing about everything but I still write about it.
I decided to have my own blog so I wouldn't have to drink with the editor for hours on end to get my stuff published when according to my independent assessment it’s always of great news value.
My religious beliefs are: You only die once so remember, "You can’t be serious and Have Fun."
NEWS FLASH: I've just been appointed the Poor Man's Press Ombudsman by Presidential Decree (Not to be confused with the PRESS COUNCIL OF SOUTH AFRICA'S, SA Press Ombudsman)